1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus of managing images stored in a storage medium. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image management method and apparatus for retrieving and displaying images stored in a storage medium mounted on or connected to an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an image forming apparatus converts a document, which a user creates using an application program and requests the image forming apparatus to print out, into encoded data and outputs the data on printing paper in a form that can be read by the user. Recently, image forming apparatuses that are directly connected to an external storage medium, such as a memory card or a universal serial bus (USB) memory stick, so that image data input from the external storage medium can be printed or image forming apparatuses having a large-capacity hard disk have been introduced.
When this type of image forming apparatus receives an input of image data from a memory card and prints the image, the image forming apparatus is generally equipped with a display apparatus such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) capable of displaying an image stored in the memory card so that the user can confirm images stored in the memory card and select an image to be printed. Also, a display apparatus attached to the photo printer has an N-up display function for displaying a plurality of images on one screen so that a plurality of images stored in the memory card may be confirmed.
When an image forming apparatus comprises a large capacity hard disk, it is difficult to display images using an LCD display apparatus which is of a limited size because the number of stored images is very high. Accordingly, image retrieval methods enabling grouping and retrieving of images stored in a storage medium with respect to creation time are provided.
FIGS. 1A through 1C illustrate a conventional method of retrieving images stored in a storage medium of an image forming apparatus. According to the conventional method, if a user selects one of a plurality of time intervals formed as tabs, images belonging to the selected time interval are displayed. As illustrated in FIG. 1A, if a tab 100, “Mar '05,” indicating March 2005 is selected by the user from tabs indicating respective months, images generated in March 2005 are displayed. As illustrated in FIG. 1B, if a tab 110, “Feb '05,” indicating February 2005 is selected by the user, images generated in February 2005 are displayed. As illustrated in FIG. 1C, if one of the displayed images is selected by the user, the selected image is displayed on the entire or a substantial portion of the screen 120.
When images stored in a storage medium are managed using the conventional method as described above, the number of tabs that can be displayed is limited and when the number of tabs increases, management of the images becomes very complicated.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved system and method for effectively retrieving and displaying images stored in a storage medium of an image forming apparatus.